


21 Archangel Place

by TheMewsAtTen



Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28407666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMewsAtTen/pseuds/TheMewsAtTen
Summary: This is a sort of angsty/fluffy/wishful-thinking Christmas triptych in three vignettes, from Adil's POV, for the very brilliant ArtDeco - I hope you enjoy it!
Relationships: Toby Hamilton/Adil Joshi
Comments: 11
Kudos: 10
Collections: Halcyon winter holidays 2020





	1. Friday 12th December 1947 - 6am

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArtDeco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtDeco/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this, ArtDeco - I believe I have been faithful to your requests and avoided your squicks. If not, I can only apologise. I hope you are having a wonderful festive season whatever you are/aren't doing, and that 2021 brings you joy.
> 
> My thanks too to SzonKlin, who invited me to take part in this fest - thank you for including me, and for all of your hard work organising and generally making it happen. You are appreciated.

Adil groaned, rolling over in bed, scrabbling hazily in the direction of the bedside table. The alarm clock was letting out an urgent, piercing ring. He pawed around in the darkness until his hand lighted on it, then cursed quietly as it tumbled forwards, landing with a thump onto the floor and rolling under the bed, still emitting its shrill jangle. He leaned right over, making a grab at it, falling out of bed completely naked in the process. He eventually laid hands on the thing, clumsily thumbing the latch and replacing it on the bedside table.

He sighed as the room was finally plunged back into glorious silence.

Not for the first time, he thanked his lucky stars that Mrs Graves still hadn’t managed to find a tenant for the flat downstairs. She’d turned out to be the perfect landlady - living right across town, she was happy to leave him alone as long as he paid in his rent every week and brought no trouble to the door. Not like old Mr Robson at the bedsit in Paddington, Adil recalled with a shudder. He’d lived in the building, and made it his personal mission to know everything about everyone under his roof. Adil and Toby had had some _very_ close calls with Robson while Adil had been living there.

So, what with a blissfully absentee landlady and the only other flat in the building standing empty, he really had more privacy at the moment than he’d ever had in his whole life. Plenty of freedom to do battle with offensive alarm clocks at 6am on a Friday, anyway.

Shivering, he slipped back into the warmth of their little cocoon under the blankets, relishing the heat of Toby’s naked body. It was another bitingly, cruelly cold morning, and the room itself was freezing compared to the cosiness of the double bed they shared whenever they got the chance.

It wasn’t that the flat was lacking. Not at all. The move to Archangel Place was a huge improvement on that rundown bedsit in Paddington that Adil had had to make do with for years before he’d been called up. Mrs Graves had inherited the townhouse at the end of the war, and she’d been shrewd enough to realise that she could turn it into two fairly comfortable flats and make far more in rent than she would if she left it as it was. No, the flat was as good a one as Adil could afford on a bar manager’s wages and the nest egg that Uncle Sanjeev had left him in his will. But the last few winters had been merciless, getting into every nook and cranny of every building in London. Even the guests in the better rooms at The Halcyon had taken to complaining about the persistent cold.   


He shuddered to think how cold this winter would have been in the bedsit. 

Despite Adil’s inelegant scuffle with the alarm clock, Toby was still only just stirring, instinctively burrowing his way back into the pillow. He threw his arm across Adil’s torso, entwining their legs just like he always did.

“Toby,” Adil croaked, his voice still a little ragged from sleep.

“Ngh.”

“Toby, it’s 6. You said you needed to get up.”

“Half an hour,” Toby whined, the sound muffled by his pillow.

Adil smiled. He could hardly blame Toby. There was something not quite human about having to get up at 6am in the cold darkness of London in December. Every inch of his own body, every limb, seemed to be numbing itself ready for hibernation. And Adil was the early riser of the two of them. Toby was too much of a night owl to get up in the early hours without a fuss, even at the best of times.

But part of Adil was frustrated with Toby, too. He could _easily_ have that extra half an hour, and more besides, if he didn’t always have to go running on pre-work detours to the hotel to pick something up, or to breakfast with his mother, or just to show face - to prove that he was there. The Halcyon had been far enough away when Adil lived in Paddington. Now, from Archangel Place, it was a cab ride or a half-hour hike away.

Toby shifted a little beside him, and took to nestling against Adil’s bare chest. They slept naked together, even in the bitter cold, sharing their heat, warmed up even more by the feeling of being close to each other, skin to skin.

Adil pressed his toes, now freezing cold, to the skin of Toby’s calf, giggling as Toby yelped and shot up in bed.

Toby wrestled Adil onto his back, rolling on top of him, and Adil kissed him full on the mouth, swallowing his laughter, their morning breath be damned. He bucked his hips, his arousal finding friction against Toby’s.

“Mmm,” Toby purred.

Adil bit gently at Toby’s earlobe in response, listening out in the still-darkness for his breath shallowing the way it always did.

Then Toby shifted slightly, trailing lips and teeth and tongue along Adil’s jawbone, running a thumb across his nipple, grinding into him.

It had been seven years. Adil still wanted Toby, still fancied him the way he had at the start, and still felt like Toby was attracted to him, too. They were more comfortable with each other, now, the way he knew couples became as they grew to know each other better and to love each other more. But _this_ never felt tired, the mornings like this, the ones they were able to spend together, usually all too infrequent and brief. They held onto each other, chasing bliss, feeling for a short while like nothing else in the world outside the door mattered.

Toby threw himself onto his back next to Adil a few minutes later, and they lay there together for a moment, breathing heavily, coming down from it all, the darkness bleaching ever-so-slowly into morning light.

Adil nuzzled into Toby’s shoulder but Toby shifted quickly, pecking a brief kiss onto Adil’s forehead before grabbing his watch from the bedside table and turning on the lamp to check the time.

“Damn, I need to get going if I’m going to make it to the hotel and into work on time,” he muttered, turning his back on Adil and clambering out of bed.

Adil suppressed an exasperated sigh as the hand that had rested on Toby’s skin fell empty to the mattress. He tried to ignore the way cold seemed to creep like dead fingers into the double bed that was now half empty; the way it felt like it was seeping into his chest.

He watched Toby pull on his clothes, his braces, the tie that he had finally mastered with practice. Adil thought for a moment about those early days. Funny, how they were the same men, but different. Toby had more confidence now, was more worldly than he had been before the War, before D’Abberville and the bombing at the hotel. And Adil now carried the memory of two years’ military service in Greece. They were bound more firmly together - their arguments didn’t feel like they might be the end of everything the way they sometimes had early on.

Even that two years’ separation hadn’t torn them apart.

It wasn’t long after the bombing of the hotel that Adil was drafted. They’d both known it _could_ happen. They’d just refused to talk about it until then. Then the call had come. Toby had been devastated. Adil really thought it might break him; break them both. That he might not come back. That Toby might find someone else, that something might happen to him, and Adil wouldn’t be there to protect him.

But he _had_ come back. And Toby _had_ been waiting for him. That first time he saw Adil again, so many letters having passed between them, all codes and false names, of course, Adil that little bit broader and thicker set from all the heavy work, Toby that little bit more jaded after their separation - they’d fallen together and hadn’t even had to speak the words. They cried together and held each other and had crazed, passionate sex and lay together afterwards knowing more than they ever had that this was forever. That whatever they had to do to survive together, they would do. Even if it meant they’d always be a secret, that they’d have to fit what they were together into the little gaps in their lives outside.

“I’ll miss you tonight,” Toby was looking at him in the mirror as he straightened his tie, smiling his small, thoughtful smile. “The hotel bar is a lot more efficient with you around. And you know I love seeing you in a black suit . . .”

Adil let his head fall back against the pillow. The bar had been busy lately, and tonight would be James’ first Friday night unsupervised. Bar Manager at The Halcyon was a very stressful job - even more so than he’d expected. Still, coming back from war to a better job than he’d left had been a real stroke of luck. His promotion, then the inheritance he’d been left in Uncle Sanjeev’s will, had made it possible to afford a better flat, for a start. Now he wore a suit to work, gave more orders than he had to take, and no more tiny, grotty bedsit. At least now he could eat and sleep in two different rooms, and he and Toby had a double bed to share when he managed to stay over. Adil knew he should be happy with where his life was compared to where it had been ten years ago. He felt guilty that he couldn’t shake the sense of being ill-at-ease, of The Halcyon continuing to swallow him and Toby, their lives and their selves and everything they were, like some glitzy, gilded hell-mouth.

“I’m tempted to come in anyway. It’s James’ first night leading the team but I’m really not sure he’s ready. I swear I’m starting to realise why Mr Garland is always prowling around with a face like a wet weekend . . .” Adil muttered drily.

“You . . . have _earned_ this night off,” Toby said sternly, walking over to the bed, lifting Adil’s chin and kissing him gently.

“I wish you didn’t have to leave so early,” Adil murmured, hating the needy whine he heard in his own voice. “Will you come back tonight?”

“I’ll try. I promise, I really will. I’ll try to give Mother the slip as soon as I can after dinner. I just . . . I don’t want people to notice, to draw attention . . .”

“Who notices, Toby?” Adil asked, exasperated. “People will just assume it’s . . . a woman. Or friends. A party. Most people will be willing to believe the lies you tell them.”

“And what about the ones who aren’t?” Toby bit back coldly, straightening his tie with a final tug.

Adil said nothing. He knew that what had happened with D’Abberville still haunted Toby, and that it probably always would. Seven years had seen many changes, but not for men like them. They still had to be careful. It wasn’t new, this caution. But lately, the creeping around, the deception and the secrecy, the sheer loneliness and prohibition and instability of it all, had left Adil more thoroughly sick at heart than ever before.

“I _promise_ you I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Toby said gently as he pulled on his overcoat.

Adil nodded, the sound of the front door closing behind Toby leaving a lonely echo in his ears.


	2. Saturday 13th December 1947 - 1am

Adil was reading when he heard the quiet scraping at the door, followed by a series of metallic-sounding clicks. He smiled wryly, and a moment later Toby stumbled in, having finally coaxed his key into the lock.

Adil had given him a spare as soon as he’d moved to Archangel Place. It had been as much an expression of his commitment as it was a practicality. There was, so far, no-one to be overly watchful of lurking in the hallways of the otherwise-empty townhouse, and besides, Adil didn’t want to have to get out of his warm bed every time Toby turned up in the early hours, the worse for wear after one of Priscilla Hamilton’s dinner summonses.

He looked up to see Toby flashing him a soppy, slightly tipsy smile. This wasn’t the roaring drunk Toby of the early years of the war. This was the sweetly drunk man Adil was more familiar with these days.

He smiled indulgently from his chair by the fire. “So, how was dinner?”

“Long,” answered Toby, looking unsteady as he toed off his shoes. “Freddie and Emma have finally settled on some place in Wales that used to belong to the Earl of Glamorgan. I can’t remember the name. Only that it’s got lots of consonants in it, and hardly any vowels. Anyway, no doubt the happy couple will be as sickeningly in love there with the baby as they’ve been at the hotel. Mother is, of course, devastated that it’s so far from London. Oh, and you’ll be relieved to know that James was fine. Not as good as you, of course. But no fires, no floods, no fights.”

Adil hated himself a little for the jagged jealousy he suddenly felt towards Freddie and Emma. They were lovely people, a couple in love who didn’t deserve his hostility. But he couldn’t help it. When he thought about everything they could have, and _would_ have, and so easily, too, it made him angry. They had a marriage they could celebrate publicly, a baby on the way, and now a country estate where they could build their lives together. All the while, Adil and Toby would happily settle for the simplest of homes, a quiet existence, somewhere where they would be safe to be who they were in peace, impinging on no-one. It didn’t feel like much to ask by comparison.

He placed his book, cover up, on the arm of his chair, and walked towards Toby, slipping his overcoat from his shoulders tenderly.

Toby stumbled a little as he turned to face Adil, pressing his cold nose against the warm skin of Adil’s cheek, running his icy fingers through Adil’s hair.

“Hmm. Love it like that. Messy,” he mumbled, a familiar twinkle in his eye.

Adil smiled knowingly as Toby fell to his knees in front of him and began to fiddle with his fly.

“Toby, what are you doing?” he asked with an exasperated sigh.

“I . . . am doing . . .” Toby announced haughtily, “exactly what it _looks_ like I’m doing.”

“You’re drunk. I love you. I _want_ you. But you’re drunk. Come to bed.”

“Adiiiiiiiil,” Toby wheedled, struggling back to his feet.

“Toby, come on, not when you’re drunk,” Adil whispered, running a thumb over Toby’s cheek. “I’ve told you. I like you to feel everything I do to you. I like you to remember it. Because I _mean_ it all. Every little bit of it. OK?”

“Love you,” Toby answered, his head slumping exhausted onto Adil’s shoulder.

“I love you too.”

Adil undressed Toby slowly, then pulled off his own clothes before turning out the light. Burrowing into the bed, he pulled a flagging Toby into his arms.

“Adil?” Toby asked into the darkness, already slurring with the beginnings of sleep.

“Yes?” Adil answered quietly.

“I came to you. I promised. I came home. Home to you,” Toby mumbled, before the sound of his snoring announced he’d finally fallen asleep.

Adil felt emotion choking his throat. The tears that spilled out of him were big and heavy, and felt like they’d been bottled for weeks, desperate to burst free.

He’d give anything to know he _was_ Toby’s home. Not that bloody hotel where he had to pretend to be someone he wasn’t, and Τοby to be someone _he_ wasn’t, where it always felt like someone was pretending or hiding or acting the part, where it all felt so tight and restrictive and unbending, somehow. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that they had to live in a world full of people who believed they were wrong, dirty even, that they shouldn’t have a home and a life together, out in the open, like Freddie and Emma. It felt like the cruellest punishment for having done nothing wrong. If they could only know the love between him and Toby, would it make a difference? Or would they still always be expected to creep around, the truth buried like something awful, Adil prowling the hotel corridors like a thief in the night, Toby sneaking out of the hotel to Adil’s flat like some kind of shameful conspirator? Even old Lord Hamilton, with his base liaisons with the worst kind of women, had been tolerated if not applauded. How could the pure love he felt for Toby be so indecent by comparison?

Adil let his swollen eyes fall closed and his limbs go heavy, resisting the image that was trying to slip furtively into the back of his mind, of two sad old men, grey hair and weary eyes and wrinkled faces, meeting in dark corners.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Adil awoke to Toby’s arms wrapped tightly around his waist, the heat from Toby’s chest stroking warmth down the length of his spine. Toby kissed lightly between his shoulder blades. The room around him was light, which meant it was at least nine o’clock, and Adil knew he should be feeling rested and contented.

But before he’d even opened his eyes, he knew he’d woken up angry with the world. The vague remembrance of bad dreams made his head feel foggy, and despite having cried himself to exhaustion the night before, he still felt on the verge of tears.

“Tea?” he asked, scrambling out of Toby’s arms, perching on the edge of the bed and hastily pulling on trousers and a vest.

“Um, please,” Toby answered. He sounded confused and hurt.

Adil felt wretched. He hadn’t wanted Toby to feel rejected. He wished he could explain it to him, how he was feeling, that he just needed to be doing something so that he wouldn’t give in to the bad mood he’d woken up in.

“Are you OK? I’m sorry if I disturbed you, coming in so late last night, I . . .”

“You didn’t. It’s fine. I’m glad you came. I . . . would have missed you terribly if you hadn’t. Would be missing you right now . . .” Adil answered honestly, padding into the kitchen to bring teacups and saucers to the table by the fire, hoping Toby would let the matter drop if he busied himself.

“You know . . . You do know, how much I wish we could wake up together every morning? Together. Somewhere together,” Toby said when Adil returned, sitting up on the edge of the bed.

Adil felt his anger clawing at his chest. It wasn’t anger at Toby, but it was there nonetheless, a huge monster in the room, pacing the space between them. 

“Well, we can’t, can we? So it’s hard luck,” he felt one of the teacups he was holding break into pieces as he landed it too heavily on the table.

“Please just tell me what’s wrong,” Toby said weakly.

Adil fell into a chair, his head in his hands.

“I . . . it’s been seven years, Toby. It’s like being stuck in time. And I wish that _bloody_ hotel wasn’t the centre of our lives. Me _creeping_ upstairs to be with you after my shift, you _creeping_ out to see me, then slipping back in again at dawn. It’s . . .”

“What do you expect me to do Adil?” Toby demanded testily.

“I’m just sick of being your dirty little secret, Toby! Seven years is a long time to be someone’s . . . bit on the side!”

Adil regretted the words as soon as they’d leapt into the room from his lips.

Toby looked like he’d been slapped. He dressed hurriedly as Adil sat there, speechless, struggling to find the words to put it right.

Toby pulled on his overcoat, avoiding Adil’s eyes.

“Toby, I’m sorry, don’t go, I love you, and I didn’t mean . . . I know you lo-“

“ _Yes_. I _love_ you. And I _know_ you love me, Adil,” he said, his voice a cold calm. “But I can’t talk about this right now. My mother is expecting me at brunch and, I just can’t do this right now . . .” his voice quavered as he walked out of the flat, closing the door hard behind him.

“Christ!” Adil barked out into the empty flat, staring at the shards of china still sitting there on the table, as if they might suddenly jump up and piece themselves together into an answer to all of their problems.


	3. Christmas Eve 1947 - 3.30pm

A bottle of whisky sat on the table between them. Toby and Adil were curled up opposite each other in front of the fire, glasses with an inch or so of amber liquid in their hands, the grey day already beginning to give way to darkness outside.

Adil had half an eye on Toby. He looked shifty and anxious, toying compulsively with the signet ring on his finger. They’d made up after the row they’d had a week or so ago, but Toby had been preoccupied ever since. Adil was torn between letting the whole thing lie, not wanting to dredge up an argument that could be over if they wanted it to be, and bringing it up because, when it came down to it, something about it didn’t _feel_ quite over. 

“What’s the matter?” Adil asked, trying not to sound too pushy. “You’ve been jumpy since you got back from the hotel. Is it your mother again?”

It was rare for Toby to come back from a brunch with his mother at The Halcyon _without_ some tale about her latest gripes and demands. That would certainly explain his anxiety now.

“I . . . no, no. I just . . .” Toby leapt up suddenly, making his way to where his overcoat hung behind the front door. He fished in the pocket, returning to his chair with a black box in his hand, about the size of a small notebook.

“Um, I want to give you something. Call it .. . a Christmas gift. A gift to both of us, really. From me.”

“Oh? We usually wait until Christmas Day to exchange gifts, don’t we?”

Adil tried not to let his anxiety show. Toby had never quite got out of the habit of over-compensating at Christmas. It had caused arguments in the past. Adil asked him not to go overboard, because in spite of his own improved circumstances, he still wasn’t in a position to return the favour. Toby had said it didn’t matter, that he never expected Adil to respond in kind anyway. Adil had said it mattered to _him_. Toby would agree to keep his gifts sensible, only to go wild again the next birthday or Christmas or some other, more spurious occasion. It was a story that had played out several times in their years together.

“Yes,” Toby said with a wry smile. “But this is important. Special, I mean. I just . . . look, I don’t think I can wait to give it to you.”

He handed Adil the box across the kitchen table, and Adil got that familiar sinking feeling that told him he was about to receive something he couldn’t possibly compete with.

He flipped the box open uneasily.

A key sat nestled on a small cushion inside.

Adil looked up at Toby, who was gazing at him with a smile.

“Yours. To my new flat,” he shrugged, steepling his fingers, a look of apprehension suddenly clouding his features. 

“New flat?” Adil asked, thoroughly confused now.

“Yes. I thought - a _lot_ \- about what you said, the other day. You’re right. It’s time we had something that’s ours. We can’t have everything Freddie and Emma have. I know that. That isn’t the world we live in, sadly. But I’m not happy living like we do, either. It isn’t just you who feels . . . stuck. I _don’t_ want to live in the bloody Halcyon all my life. And I realised - I don’t have to! There’s no good reason for me to stay there indefinitely. Wanting to make my mother happy . . . it’s a habit, that’s all. It’s what I was always told was most important. But it’s not. _We_ are what’s most important to me, Adil. I needn’t stay in her power any longer. I have an inheritance; not like Freddie’s, of course, but it’s something. And my own income. Now the war’s over . . .”

“God, Toby I never meant for you to feel like this, like you had to . . .”

“No, Adil, let me finish. OK? That day, when I went to brunch with Mother and Freddie and Emma, I just spent the whole time thinking, you know, about what you’d said. I sat there listening to them talking about their lives, and I thought about why I _still_ live in that little room in The Halcyon. Or pretend to, at least. What on Earth is keeping me there, doing it all, playing the part?! The fact is, I’d long ago assumed that that would be all there would be for me. It was . . . like a luxurious sort of . . . _holding cell_ , somewhere for me to just be until I was forced into marriage to some useful heiress. But Mother, she seems to have lost the will to force the issue of marriage now. I suppose now that Freddie and Emma are married with a child on the way, the matter’s lost much of its urgency. Anyway, I realised I was only staying because it was all I’d ever known - all I’d assumed I could ever have. But then there was you. All the colour in my world, the stars in my sky, and all that stuff. The picture in my mind that kept me going through every dinner party and awkward brunch. And the solution dawned on me so suddenly I could have laughed. I can’t offer you what Freddie can offer Emma, we both know that. But you’re my happiness, _you are my home_ , and I’m going to get as close to that happiness as I can. So . . .” Toby finished, his eyes sparkling with something Adil recognised as mischief, “would you like to see my new flat?”

“Y-yes, of course, I . . .” Adil stammered, at a loss even as Toby grabbed the key, box-and-all, and bolted out of the front door in just his shirt sleeves.

“To - . . . Toby wait, you haven’t even got your coat on,” Adil called as he followed on his heels into the hallway, bewildered.

He reached the bottom of the stairs to find Toby standing there with his biggest grin next to the open door to the unoccupied downstairs flat, gesturing for Adil to enter.

“Toby, wh-“

“Here we are,” Toby chirped. “I’m now officially Mr Toby Hamilton, resident of 21 Archangel Place, and your only neighbour.”

Adil stood there gaping, stunned.

“The _Honourable_ Toby Hamilton,” Adil corrected quietly when the words finally came to him. “It’s lovely, but it’s not much of an establishment for the brother of a _lord_ , Toby.”

“The unmarried younger brother of a lord, Adil. With a job and an extreme distaste for pomp. I think we both know some stuffy pile in the shires was never going to really suit me. It’s not unusual for someone like me to take a flat these days, it’s the 40s for God’s sake, and you know as well as I do the building and the area are perfectly respectable.”

“Is this really what you want?” Adil asked, dumbstruck, hoping to God he would see the answer he was hoping for in Toby’s eyes.

“Yes. Well, what I _wanted_ was to buy the whole building from our good friend Mrs Graves, but I knew how you’d react to that. God knows you made heavy weather of it when I tried to buy you a _watch_ , never mind a flat.”

Adil really did roll his eyes at that.

“The next best thing is taking the lease on this flat, so that we can be together,” Toby finished, as if this was the simplest and most logical thing in the world.

“What if people talk, Toby? What about your mother? And Freddie? What if they think it’s, well, _odd_?”

“What will they talk about? It’s not like I’m packing my bags and announcing to the whole hotel that I’m moving in with my lover, Adil. Two men who happen to know each other professionally happen to live in two different flats at the same address. It’s hardly unthinkable. And it’s hardly odder than a man in his 30s living in a hotel with his mother. Besides, it’s like you said the other day, most people are willing to believe the lies we tell them. As long as we’re discreet, if we keep our heads down . . .”

“That’s no small thing to ask, Toby. It hurts the soul, all that ‘discretion’ and keeping your head down, and especially for the brother of . . .”

“Yes, yes, the brother of a lord,” Toby waved off the phrase like it was a wasp at a picnic. “Look, I’m not saying it’s _right_ , or fair or just. Should we have to be discreet? No. But we _can_ be. And if we are, we can be together. And that’s what I want. This isn’t a dream come true. I’m not trying to fix the world. It’s just one way we can be closer, fewer prying eyes, we won’t have to have every part of our lives shaped by the hotel anymore, we can have some distance between the place and us. I want to get as close to you as I can. For the rest of my life. And, this way, you still have whatever space you need from _me_ , your independence. I know that’s important. And . . . and I will happily stand here until _next_ Christmas trying to convince you if I have to.”

Adil felt a fat tear roll down his cheek, his hands trembling, the realisation of what this all meant beginning to settle in his mind, the fog of confusion and surprise clearing, leaving pictures of cosy nights in front of the fire, dinner together, being the first and last person to see Toby every day. 

“That won’t be necessary,” he laughed thickly. “Toby, this is the best Christmas present you could possibly have given me. I’m in, OK? Completely. I’m just . . . I’m so used to worrying about us being found out. It’s just going to take a while to get used to. But I’m happy. Of course I’m happy, knowing your home is where mine is.”

“Of course it’s where yours is. It _is_ you. I love you. We’ll make this work. It’s for both of us, me as much as you. You’re my whole world, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to realise that I don’t . . . _need_ to keep my own happiness at arm’s length anymore. It’s not perfect. It’s not quite what we both want, I know that. But it’s a step closer. And who knows, in the future, if there’s any justice in the world, things will get easier. And by and by . . .”

“Well, whatever that brings, you have me. I’m willing to ride out whatever we need to ride out. I’ve always been ready to ride out anything for you. Since the first time I kissed you. The first time I clapped eyes on you.”

“Less _‘creeping around’_ . . .” Toby emphasised the words Adil had spoken on that Saturday morning, the ones he’d wished he could have taken back.

“God, I’m sorry if I hurt you. I really didn’t mean . . .”

“Shh-shh,” said Toby, cradling Adil’s face in his hands and kissing him gently. “You were right, my love. As always. And I’m _so_ happy, Adil. Merry Christmas.”

“I’m happy too. Merry Christmas, Toby.”


End file.
